Annette Lavers-Roland Barthes, Structuralism and After

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Parts of this work were presented in various workshops in the
European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions: the workshop
on democratic innovation directed by Michael Saward in Manheim
(1999), the workshop on voluntary associations and democracy directed
by Sigrid Rossteutcher in Torino (2001), and the workshop on republicanism
directed Iseult Honahan and Jeremy Jennings in Edinburgh
(2003). I thank the organizers and the participants in these workshops
for their comments. I speciall

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Annette Lavers-Roland Barthes, Structuralism and After

Uploaded by

Description:

Parts of this work were presented in various workshops in the
European Consortium for Political Research Joint Sessions: the workshop
on democratic innovation directed by Michael Saward in Manheim
(1999), the workshop on voluntary associations and democracy directed
by Sigrid Rossteutcher in Torino (2001), and the workshop on republicanism
directed Iseult Honahan and Jeremy Jennings in Edinburgh
(2003). I thank the organizers and the participants in these workshops
for their comments. I speciall

Imagination of our Present: Jean Baudrillard

from the The System of Objects to the Domotics

and the Internet of Things Nello Barile

How to citeBarile, N. (2017). Imagination of our Present: Jean Baudrillard from the The System of Objectsto the Domotics and the Internet of Things. [Italian Sociological Review, 7 (4), 437-446]Retrieved from [http://dx.doi.org/10.13136/isr.v7i4.204]

3. Article accepted for publication

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Imagination of our Present: Jean Baudrillard from the TheSystem of Objects to the Domotics and the Internet of ThingsNello Barile*

Corresponding author:Nello BarileE-mail: nello.barile@iulm.it

Abstract

The article reflects on the connections between Baudrillard’s first reflections on

space, design and technology and the contemporary innovations that blurredcompletely the border between virtual and real. Just because not so present in theinternational debate on the new web as in the nineties, Jean Baudrillard’s work stilldeserves to be rediscovered and applied to the innovations that mark our time.Probably only authors such as Geert Lovink (2011) are using the reference to theFrench philosopher to establish a union trait between the old web and the so-calledweb 2.0. This is why it might be more useful to reflect on how the visionary characterof Baudrillard has anticipated a future vision, still to be explored systematically. Forthis reason in the following article I will try to compare Baudrillard’s first work whichis an insightful dissertation on the relationship between the virtual space ofcommunication and the physical space of the architecture, forerunning one of thelatest trends in digital innovation that is the integration between bits and atoms as inthe recent debate on the end of the ‘digital dualism’ (Jurgenson, 2011).

Baudrillard’s most popular concept is the simulacra as the core of a

reflection on media and digital innovation involving the relationship betweenvirtual and real. In the final part of his career, the philosopher developed a

* Department of Communication, Art and Media, IULM University, Italy.

Italian Sociological Review, 2017, 7, 4, pp. 437 - 446

sort of implicit critique to the domination of the reality made by the virtualworld, after the tragic event of the 11/9. The spirit of terrorism (2002)introduces a decisive question that we could almost consider as a self-criticismto the very conception of the virtuality as a final stage of the simulacrum.

And in this singular event, in this Manhattan disaster movie, the twentieth century’s two elements of mass fascination are combined: the white magic of the cinema and the black magic of terrorism; the white light of the image and the black light of terrorism (pp. 29-30)… The image consumed the event, in the sense that it absorbs it and offers it for consumption (p. 27). We might almost say that reality is jealous of fiction, that the real is jealous of the image… It is a kind of duel between them, a contest to see which can be the most unimaginable (Baudrillard, 2002: 28).

If the global imagery generated by Hollywood suggested the idea that thespectacular catastrophe is the one represented by the fiction, the 9/11 eventshows how the reality can be even more spectacular than the fiction. In thiscompetition between the virtual event and the real one, Baudrillard argues thatthe reality can compete with the imagery because it has absorbed the virus ofthe spectacle. The idea of a challenge between reality and image to those whoare more ‘unimaginable’ is linked to the liberation of history from thereference orbit of reality can produce a hyper-history that competes with theimaginary in the breakdown of the catastrophe. Yet in this mutualcontamination, the imaginary also undergoes a drastic revision of its ends,curbing on reality to begin to nourish history, singularity, and authenticity. Inthis sense, Baudrillard captures the general trend of the new millenniumculture beyond the euphoric enthusiasm and hangover of the so-called utopiaof communication. For this reason it is necessary to return to the principle ofits speculation by examining the key steps of the System of Objects in order toidentify in this work some key themes that will be ‘implemented’ by the latestdigital innovations. The text begins with a dual theoretical aims: (A) to identify some principles of classification of the contemporarycommodity system; (B) to investigate the use or the relationship between the subject and thenetwork of objects around him.

2. Research

As will be seen in this article, the two different instances are not at alldivergent and the impossibility of formulating a general, classifying principle

438 Nello Barile Imagination of our Present: Jean Baudrillard from the The System of Objects to the Domotics and the Internet of Things

to unify the plethora of everyday objects is associated with the need to identifya moving, dynamic, eteroclite principle through which the object allows us todefine its location in our world. In this sense, the text is in continuity with thefamous introductory speech by Michel Foucault in The Words and Things (1966,1994). Modernity with its proliferation of speeches, places, devices, and so on,breaks the taxonomic unit of the ‘classical era’ and imposes a chaoticclassification principle in which the container must adapt, reminiscent of thefierce variety of content.

That passage from Borges kept me laughing a long time, though not without a certain uneasiness that I found hard to shake off. Perhaps be- cause there arose in its wake the suspicion that there is a worse kind of disorder than that of the incongruous, the linking together of things that are inappropriate; I mean the disorder in which fragments of a large number of possible orders glitter separately in the dimension, without law or geometry, of the heteroclite; and that word should be taken in its most literal, etymological sense: in such a state, things are ‘laid’, ‘placed’, ‘arranged’ in sites so very different from one another that it is impossible (Foucault 1994: XVII-XVIII).

a logic space which is able to contain the disorder and the diversity of things.This is called the eteroclite. Certainly a long time has passed since theencyclopaedia designed during the Enlightenment tried to gather the variety ofbodies created by God and man, bringing them into an universal tree. Therupture produced by the techno-industrial progress has greatly offset therelationship between nature’s products and man’s products, to a deliberate riseof the latter, even almost ‘it would appear that the vocabulary no longersuffices to name them’. The ontological tear produced by industrialproduction breaks the balance between the syntax of words and objects,resulting in a total unbalancing of the society towards the second. The objectnow seems to be experiencing an unexpected revival, and certainly the wayBaudrillard intends this notion is far from the material value that gives him thecommon sense. The object, of course, is not just an object. After thereflection of the anthropology of goods (Douglas, Isherwood, 1979), we canconceive the commodity as a medium, a vehicle continually renegotiatingmeanings. The gaze that the philosopher directs towards the objects is verysimilar to the one of the semiologist. It observes a communicating object thatworks functionally in a technical apparatus aimed at satisfying certain needsthrough the invention of new practices These are at the same time an obstacleto the spread of new products but also the source of inspiration for newinventions. It is not a coincidence that the techneme is defined as the

439 Italian Sociological Review, 2017, 7, 4, pp. 437 - 446

minimum unit of the techno-productive system, occupying a position similar

to that of the phoneme in the language. Techneme is a sui generis unit as it isat the same time object, device and principle of classification of the object towhich it refers. It indicates the stage of an ontological regime in which there isstill equilibrium, symmetry and correspondence between words and things.This balance is not only quantitative – in terms of quantity of goods in relationto the names that designate them – but also qualitative in the sense that theobject as a single unit is the result of a relatively balanced relationship betweenmatter and shape, physical and virtual identity. For this reason, theinvestigation focuses on a certain kind of objects in which a nucleus ofmaterial gravity can still be found that saves them from the fate of a worldabandoned to the artificiality. It is not a case that the analysis takes the footfrom the closest environment surrounding the body, towards which wedevelop an immediate ‘practical’ attitude: home. The principle that regulatesthe diversity of objects within a bourgeois room, together with theirreferences and their mutual implications, is defined as ‘moral’. Themonumentality of furniture in the living rooms and in the traditionalbedrooms is built around a core of intimacy that must be protected andcultivated. In this sense, the symbolic thickness of manufacturing materialscorresponds to the moral or sentimental thickness of a permanent network ofrelationships that is clearly sanctioned: the ‘cuts between interior and exterior’as well as the ‘formal opposition’ under the social sign of the property andunder the psychological sign of the ‘familiar immanence’ (Baudrillard 1996:20). On the opposite side is the modern environment – of young couples orsingles – who for the sake of mobility and space are bound to surround withessential items without too many horns. Furniture that, ‘dried up’ to theiressential function, turns out to be free or liberated in achieving their purefunctionality. However, this ‘emancipation’ of the object would correspond toa subject that is no longer ‘liberated’ because it is only recognized as the userof the object in question: ‘the object is liberated only in its function, manequally is liberated only as a user of that object’ (Baudrillard 1996: 18). In the logical opposition between a traditional environment (governed bya principle of nature) and a modern environment (inspired by a principle ofpure abstraction), Baudrillard identifies a third indispensable orientation forunderstanding today’s consumption that is capable to assign the same moralvalue to traditional furnishings as well as to the smooth surfaces of themodern environment. This orientation expresses exemplary the disruptiveanthropological transformation of the subject and the relationship with hisprimary environment. It is no coincidence that the new forms of living arecharacterized by an ‘active environment informer’ who uses ‘space as adistribution structure’ and that ‘by controlling this space, it has in his hand

440 Nello Barile Imagination of our Present: Jean Baudrillard from the The System of Objects to the Domotics and the Internet of Things

every possibility of mutual relationship and consequently the totality of roles

that objects can take’ (Baudrillard 1996: 27). In a few lines, a paradigmatic turnof the initial thesis is celebrating. The world of things – which places thesubject inside by relegating it to the role of ‘end user’ of functions distributedin the objects – tends today to overturn this perspective drastically. Thefunctional project is also supported by the advertising (his imaginary anchor)when it joins new suggestions passing through a rhetoric made of emotionalexpressions. Simple language solutions like ‘to your taste’, ‘according to yourneeds’, ‘this atmosphere will be yours,’ ‘personalization’ and so on. Theyacquire the function of real cognitive environments that point to a new way ofconceiving the technique. This is certainly an atavistic concept, but it can beunderstood today as an emerging or re-emerging trend of contemporarysocieties: the idea of a subject as a ‘vessel of inwardness’ (Baudrillard 1996:28). The functional object is generated as tearing or betrayal of therequirements that governed the traditional system: the primary function of theobject; driving and primary needs; reciprocal symbolic relationship (81).However, it is not possible to conceive the famous category of goods-sign inthe sense of a total overcoming of the previous stage that generates anabstract system of empty, interchangeable and totally manipulable meaning.While it is true that formal objects preserve the historical memory of theirancient, craftsman-unique colleagues – the ‘fascination of an earlier life’ – theycontinue to claim the strategic importance of nature – or rather naturalness, ofa totally natural nature, ‘culturalized’ in a synthetic and artificial world. Theanalysis of the marginal object allows us to infer, from the singularity of theproduct, an emerging system of collective orientations, almost a trend. Thereis, in fact, a non-arbitrary link connecting the question of naturality (whichtoday is re-explored on a global scale thanks to green marketing andmegatrend of eco-sustainability), that of the historiality (linked to the ‘myth oforigin’) and that of authenticity exotic cultures or urban subcultures). In theunion of these three fundamental principles, we see a single large process ofrevision of the dynamics of contemporary consumption. It is no coincidencethat the latest marketing orientations of contemporary marketing, the so-calledpost-Kotlerian marketing, assimilate these guidelines into an anthropologicalshift that emphasizes the role of the past, of tradition, of a re-territorializedconsumption experience, so that we can talk today in terms of a generalMarketing of authenticity. Unfortunately, Baudrillard can not explain theseguidelines within a more complete definition of a brand than the authormerely discusses with simplicity and in a traditional way: the signage and theaffective one (236).

441 Italian Sociological Review, 2017, 7, 4, pp. 437 - 446

The psychological restructuration of the consumer is performed through a

single word – Philips, Olida, General Motors – a word capable of summing up both the diversity of objects and a host of diffuse meanings. Words of synthesis summarizing a synthesis of affects: that is the miracle of the ‘psychological label’. In effect this is the only language in which the object speaks to us, the only one it has invented (…). It is an erratic lexicon where one brand devours the other, each living for its own endless repetition. This is undoubtedly the most impoverished of languages: full of signification and empty of meaning. It is a language of signals. And the ‘loyalty’ to a brand name is nothing more than the conditioned reflex of a controlled affect (Baudrillard, 1996: 209-210).

While recognizing the concept of brand as the fundamental role in

regulating the ‘language of consumption’, the French philosopher remains tooconstrained to a classical analysis in terms of a consumption sociology thatemphasizes the status issue rather than deepening consumer terms as‘expressive’ or self-expressive language. It is no coincidence that, just whenthe analysis is more careful about the relationship between consumerpersonality and product customization (quoting also Riesman) the definitiveend of the System is to provide an ‘articulated range of personalities’ (208). Inone single description, Baudrillard is able to criticize the nature and the use ofbrands, at the same time showing the ways in which this classic conceptionhas been overwhelmed in the last two decades. The enthusiasm forauthentication of the subject goes in the direction of and extreme alienation asin the Riesman’s idea of and hetero-direct individual. On one hand thisprocess is despicable because in the combinatorial game lies an alarming‘ideological matrix’ (153), on the other it is necessary to admit that ‘evensuperficial differences are real as soon as they become invested with value’(153). In addition, besides lending to the neo-critical approaches toconsumption, Baudrillard opens up a small gap that makes possible to see –beyond a nihilistic system hungry of authenticity – some areas in whichsurvives the value of reality. The same concept goes back to the analysis of the marginal system andits element: the collection. Beyond the functional structure of the space and itsobjects, the relation of ownership and mutual construction between thesubject and the objects has to move on a metaphorical level. Only the objectliberated of its function can enter into an higher dimension that exalts thecontradictory aspects of the system. This is the controversial role of thecollector: he is the one who has total control over the elements of the series towhich it gives meaning and purpose, but he is also a slave to his own passion.In fact the true purpose of the series is to continue forever and to engage thecollector in this pursuit of a goal (the completion of the series) that is always

442 Nello Barile Imagination of our Present: Jean Baudrillard from the The System of Objects to the Domotics and the Internet of Things

deferred and that does not have to be satisfied; unless he wants to see the endof fascination itself. The collection retrieves the purely functional logic that isalready discussed in pages dedicated to the relationship between model andseries, but it transfers that logic to the intimate and concrete relationship withan object ‘élite’ (but also of living beings or reified relationships). Onlythrough its collocation, finding a place in the syntactic order of the series, theobject can acquire a patina of uniqueness. This makes the collection at thesame time a principle of aggregation and an instrument of exhibiting a certaincultural or emotional capital. Smania of possession, fanaticism and a certainamount of fetishism distinguish the collector’s world which in this sense isconceivable as the avant-garde of today’s consumer relationship with goodsand consumption. On the same deviation trajectory from the standard, banal and everydayobject, Baudrillard seeks to grasp with greater clarity and confidence thenature of contemporary consumption. In the triptych of ‘meta anddisfunctional objects’, dedicated to gadget, agglomeration, and robot, thearduous exploration of the imagination of consumption is accomplished,which is generated by the relationship of double implication between ‘humanpurposes’ and the purpose of the technique. The fascinating aspect of thegadget is primarily the ‘neotechnical’ (122) imagery that it suggests. Almost aneo-baroque era dominated by the reassurance of pure automation so muchthat ‘there is – there must be – a corresponding object for any operation: andif none exists, then one must be invented’ (122). If the world of gadgets ismade up of a plethora of objects with the meticulous – hyperspecified butequally useless feature captured by their obsessive nature, the gadget insteadworks on the inverse principle: a force that nests in its nominal indeterminacy,in its de-specialization that looks at a ‘vague functionality’ (123), multiple andunpredictable. The term itself demonstrates the rendering of language inrelation to the proliferation of objects and the primacy of industrial creativitycompared to what once lived in language. It then becomes clear that theproliferation of technical details causes an immense conceptual defeat, whichis lagging behind the structures and functional articulation of everyday objects,so that ‘in today’s society there are more and more objects and less and lessConcepts to designate them’ (149). Just a few lines to understand that these pages address fundamental issuesboth for the book’s economy and for the author’s broader theorization. Themarginality of the agglomeration (which replaces in terms of vagueness andemptiness what was once expressed by the word ‘machine’) is thecondensation site of an imagery that has crossed three stages: animist,energetic, cybernetic. If the first one dominate the myth of absolute organismand the second the myth of an absolute functionality, in the third triumphs an

443 Italian Sociological Review, 2017, 7, 4, pp. 437 - 446

imagery based by the myth of ‘absolute interrelationality’ (167). Thus, the

system of objects leads us beyond the typical reflections of the nineties ontechnological neo-animism, on the fetishism of goods, on techno-magic, andso on. What the philosopher could imagine, without mentioning it, is theexquisitely pragmatic role through which current technology changes therelationship between imaginary and everyday life. The radical alteration of thehome environment made by artificial intelligence and cybernetics, in theexperiments of the so-called domotic, represent the most vivid realization ofthe starting hypothesis of the book. In fact as he could forecast in that period,also the relationship between personalization and automation is not justoppositional but more complementary.

In this sense personalization and automation do not contradict one another

in the slightest. Automatist is simply personalization dreamt in terms of the object. It is the most finished, the most sublime form of the inessential – of that marginal differentiation that which subetends man’s personalized relationships to the objects (Baudrillard, 1996: 121)

The idea that there is a system of references and functional implications

between the subject-user and the range of accessories of different nature, size,and function that inform our dwelling is the theoretical assumption of a slowbut tangible revolution that will transform our lives over the coming decades.On a recent visit to the Fusionopolis Laboratories in Singapore, I have beenable to personally use the new ‘smart’ objects that will populate our homes inthe near future. Technologies such as RFID, for example, allow virtuallymonitoring the movements and conditions of daily use products. They offerthe opportunity for goods to entertain a constant dialogue with otheraccessories and to make tangible the pattern of relationships that arisebetween different goods (household appliances, consumer goods, mediacontent, etc.) and the subject-user. A refrigerator that analyzes the flows ofgoods and weighs orders according to diet and weekly deadlines. An internal surveillance system that warns the hospital if it detects whenthe tenant’s body is placed on the ground in an unusual position. A mattressthat understands the body weight distribution if you close the shutter and turnoff the lights. Small examples of how to live a home environment biologicallyor proximally are instantly translatable in an information flow and its relativefeedback. In this sense, the principle that unites the radical heterogeneity ofobjects moves from the functional plane (or metaphysical for other ways) tothe informational or even communicational one. The ability of the object toexchange messages with other goods, users or equipment that produced, notonly gives rise to a total interaction environment in which everything

444 Nello Barile Imagination of our Present: Jean Baudrillard from the The System of Objects to the Domotics and the Internet of Things

communicates, but even worse the barrier that until the nineties sealed thedistance between reality and virtuality.

3. Conclusions

Beyond the successes of the domotics, the dynamic integration between

these two planes represents the great revolution that draws from the tightnessof the domestic space and pours over the totality of the geographic space. AsAlberto Abruzzese noted, such a shift concerns an epochal transformation ofliving and dwelling places in the post-metropolitan dimension, which modifiesthe closed and segmented space of old urbanism towards a pattern of ‘livingconnections’ (Abruzzese, 2004). How to say that the great revolution thatawaits us, at the time of the utmost dissemination of the so-called ‘internet ofthings’, will also follow other technological and cultural innovations. Thenarration of the objects will no longer be separated from its material referent.Various researches tell today about this ‘embedded storytelling’ thattransforms objects into a dynamic and ‘open source’ projects controlled byour smartphones: palaces, monuments, resorts, landscapes and so on. Theydirectly inform their services or what they think the people who haveinteracted with us before. The future trend shows us how technology isrecomposing the fracture between the Encyclopédie and the world of things,typical of the industrial Era. The birth of Wikipedia gives digital consistency tothis heterogeneous space where objects, historical characters, touristdestinations, theoretical concepts, soubrette, common people, trade brands,consumer goods, songs, bestsellers, and so on, coexists in the same conceptualspace. Thanks to the new geolocative technologies, the increased reality andthe Internet of things – which in various ways falls into the new category ofU-Space or Universal, Unique, Ubiquo and Unisono marketplaces (Watson,Pitt, Berthon, Zinkhan, 2002) we can see the transition from Wikipedia toOntopedia. The principles of definition/classification move from a level offormal abstraction to the reality of objects so that ‘there are so manyclassification criteria as many as the objects themselves’ (Baudrillard, 1996: 3-4). This is one of the fundamental aspects of the macroprocess that I havetermed as ‘ontobranding’ (Barile, 2013) and announces a new way ofmanaging the communicative processes based on artificial intelligence systemsbut also on new ontologies (from robot emotions to the Internet of things). Inother words, the same objects become sentient and communicative media thatconvey their content and their relationship with the world. That is a point ofirreversible breakthrough that projects us into a new world no longer ‘madeof’ but ‘made by’ things.